


technical difficulties

by idekman



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Social Media AU, aka steve rogers struggles with twitter, basically au where everyone is happy and almost entirely over their issues pretty much, like yeah this is pretty fluffy, lots of grumbly sleepy bucky and who doesn't want that in their lives, twitter au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idekman/pseuds/idekman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Well, you got more followers than Katy Perry.'<br/>'That's what you woke us up for? To tell me that I got more followers than some actress -'<br/>'Katy Perry's a singer,' Bucky mumbles into the pillow.<br/>'-Some singer? It's -' he breaks off, checks the digital clock next to him. 'It's six o clock in the morning!' Next to him, Bucky lets out  an offended groan.<br/>'You're also on the news. Again.'</p><p>-</p><p>Steve Rogers' twitter ends up being more controversial than anyone expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Steve Rogers spends a lot of time in the 21st century explaining to people that he has a young, agile mind - despite having spent seventy or so years on ice - that he doesn't struggle with technology the way everyone assumes he does and _no, Tony, I don't need extra large buttons for this - it was one time!_

(He'd cracked the screen of the last StarkPad Tony had handed over. It's not _his_ fault the things break at the slightest sign of pressure. And, really, any good friend would have warned him about Flappy Bird _before_ he'd done hundreds of dollars worth of damage. Nat had just laughed at him. _Laughed_. And wandered off, leaving him to his Flappy Bird-induced misery.)

He doesn't need an instruction manual for an iPhone and he's read extensively on the difference between Mac and PC. He's all up to date, he reassures his team mates as he holds his brand new StarkPad upside down.

It's all an enormous lie. It's also one of the many reasons he's glad Bucky's here with him in the 21st century. He can usually avert minor, technology-induced disasters before they even happen; it had been Bucky who had patiently explained computer viruses to him and told him that just because the internet _says_ you've one a million bucks doesn't mean you really _have_.

(He hadn't really believed that one. No, _really_. He'd just been - curious. Or something.)

Bucky sets him up with a twitter and a facebook and warns him off tumblr - he gets one anyway. He likes looking at the drawings. His username is CaptainAmerica1920 and absolutely no one believes he's the real Captain America because, according to one user, _the symbol of American freedom and patriotism doesn't use Comic Sans._

It's a particularly cheery font. So sue him.

Tony's the one who gets his twitter account authenticated for him, and as soon as the little blue tick appears next to his name followers start flooding in. Bucky insists on taking dozens of selfies - Steve had scoffed, because _there's no way in hell that's a real word,_ until Stark had fetched a dictionary and showed it to him, along with a particularly smug expression - of the two of them and sets one of them as Steve's profile photo, Bucky grinning through a faceful of bedhead, Steve mock-scowling up at him.

He gets a lot of notifications. More than he can really keep up with. He turns on his phone one day and finds it's only showing tweets from people he follows - and Bucky's looking particularly suspicious - but Steve determinedly sets it back to normal and tries to reply to a few messages. He tells teenage girls he likes their drawings, says hello to a fan in Hong Kong - _you hear that Buck? Hong Kong!_ \- and asks Obama how his day is, because it always pays to be polite. Also because he and Bucky are sort of in D.C.'s bad books since they destroyed half of Washington.

When his twitter conversation with the President is on the news the next morning, Bucky staring slack-jawed over his cereal, he learns that a little reservation on twitter might be best.

Bucky's unfairly _good_ at twitter, though. If you can be good at such a thing. He largely eschews facebook - his only friend is Steve. Steve has six thousand, five hundred and forty friends, leading Pepper to tentatively offer a PR woman to take over his facebook posts, which so far consist of a picture of a dog he saw on his daily run and a single _"hello!"_. He declines, politely - but twitter is his forte. He has more followers than Clint and Nat put together - a fact that secretly infuriates them both greatly. His recent success is a hashtag: #badcaptainamericaphotos, with various unflattering shots of Steve doing ordinary, every day things. The one where it looks like he's picking his nose - _I was scratching it, Bucky! Take it down!_ \- gets the most retweets.

_thanks 2 @official_barnes 4 setting up my twitter. here is a photo. #badbarnesphotos_

He posts one of the selfies they took the other day - he kissing Bucky on the cheek, the man scrunching his face up in mock-disgust - and rolls his eyes at the tweet that quickly pops up on his timeline.

_u all think steve rogers is so great. you're wrong he's the #actualworst_

'You were joking, right?' Steve calls out to the bathroom where Bucky's brushing his teeth, the man in question poking his head round the door, hair pulled up into a messy bun, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He's wearing a vest top with some obscure symbols printed across it, skinny jeans - Nat forced Steve into a pair once. They were quite possibly the most uncomfortable things he's worn in his life - and a pair of reading glasses he insists he needs despite the fact Steve _knows_ he's got 20/20 vision.

'I was joking,' Bucky reassures him, rolling his eyes once his confusion clears up.

'Good.' He pauses, tilts his head to one side, then whips his phone out. 'You look like a hipster,' he throws out, a little unsure with the terminology, trying not to cackle when Bucky appears like a shot round the door.

'You take that back you preppy little shit -' he's cut off by the sound of Steve's camera snapping. Blinking in surprise, a little toothpaste running down his chin, Bucky's expression darkens. 'I swear to god if you post that on instagram -'

'You'll what?' Steve challenges, smirking at the infuriated expression flirting across Bucky's features. 'Please, I don't know what instagram _is_ ,' Steve reassures him, watching as Bucky's slim shoulders relax a fraction and he turns back to the bathroom mirror, making a disgruntled face at the state of his hair. 'I'm posting it on twitter,' Steve admits quietly, pressing send just as Bucky twists around, already scrabbling to get his phone out of his pocket.

_we all think bucky is a hipster. what do u think? #outfitoftheday_

'Hey, look -' Steve breaks off, scrolling through the replies that have already cropped up a few moments later. 'Three hundred and twenty-one people agree with me. Guess you must be a hipster.'

Flopping down on the bed next to him, Bucky lets out an elongated, ridiculous groan.

'You're skating on thin ice, pal,' Bucky tells him, looking decidedly nonthreatening as he smothers a yawn and buries his face into a pillow. 'Actual worst,' he grumbles, voice a little muffled. 'Here. Find an obscure indie band and post it to my twitter to confirm the rumours. The Winter Soldier: Soviet hipster.'

It's still a little odd, Steve must admit, when Bucky mentions the Winter Soldier in such casual terms. He always looks a little stiff when he does it, as if he's forcing the words out - but Sam's reassured him it's perfectly normal for Bucky to have such a black sense of humour, that it's a way of dealing with what's happened. It would be worse, apparently, if he never mentioned the Winter Soldier at all. So Steve shrugs, pulls gently on a strand of Bucky's hair that he's got wrapped around his finger.

'I think Nat would be pissed; Clint's been calling her the Soviet hipster since the Hozier incident,' Steve eventually manages, a little unsure still.

Bucky, lying face down on the bed, still manages to express his shudder. _Everyone_ remembers the Hozier incident.

 

He leaves his twitter alone for a little while when they get entrenched in a mission helping Coulson - _Director_ Coulson, Steve has to keep on reminding himself, who's still alive. Somehow - and his team take down a particularly persistent Hydra branch. Skye nearly faints when she meets Bucky - who blinks, a little bemused, before laying the charm on thick - and, judging by their equally tongue-tied state, Bucky claims Fitzsimmons are more in love with Steve than they are with each other.

They're eating celebratory pizza for a mission well done - _it's tradition_ , Trip tells Steve seriously, pressing a slice of pizza and a napkin into his hand - Simmons lost in discussion with Thor about alien biology whilst Fitz looks on disapprovingly, Trip flirting shamelessly with both Maria Hill and Sam at the same time, when Skye whips out her phone. She's absently checking the thing - as people seem to do these days - when she lets out a low whistle, calling out across the room;

'Fitz, you owe me ten dollars!'

'Piss off do I owe you ten - _oh_ ,' he shoots back, abruptly looking all-too guilty under Captain America's stare whilst Skye grins across at him.

'Congrats, Cap,' the woman tells him as May rolls her eyes from where she's deep in conversation with Nat - and _there's_ a pairing that could take over the world in approximately 0.5 seconds, Steve muses with an impending sense of dread - 'you beat Obama.'

'S-sorry?' Steve splutters just as Bucky appears at his elbow, eyebrow raised and drink in hand.

He's more relaxed than Steve's seen him in a long while, bundled up in a thick-knit sweater, hair pulled up into its usual bun. His shoulders are set free and easy, a smile constantly darting along his lips - and something warms, deep in Steve's chest, because he doesn't think he's ever seen Bucky with such a sense of simply _belonging_. Even in the forties he'd kept up an endless rhythm of a new girl each date and a constant stream of shady friends he'd never quite seem at ease with. Seeing his friend now, like this, taking Skye for a quick spin around an impromptu dance floor, joking with Clint, reminds him of the Bucky he once only got to see when they were alone, bumbling around their too-small apartment, scraping elbows and reveling in the closeness and comfort of one another.

'Here,' Skye tells him, shoving her phone into his hand, breaking his Bucky-induced reverie as he glances down at the screen. 'Forty three-point seven million followers - you've officially got more than Obama.'

'Just got Katy Perry and Bieber to beat out next,' Clint throws over his shoulder, even as Bucky scoffs.

' _Please_. You'll never take out the Biebs,' he mutters, scowl etched onto his forehead.

'You're just jealous because I have more followers than you,' Steve teases, eyebrow cocked as Bucky flounders, pizza turning a little crumpled in the tight grip of his metal hand.

'I - well -'

'Steve Rogers, your header image is the american flag. It is quite frankly twitter sacrilege that someone as lame as you has more followers than Obama. And, more importantly, more followers than me,' Tony interrupts, his own phone in hand, peering down at Skye's battered iPhone contemptuously. 'Your latest tweet was about the _pandas_ at the zoo.'

 _You went to the zoo without me?_ Comes Sam's outraged shout, muffled by the music and crowd of people.

-

He posts a song he heard at the party when he gets home, Bucky grumbling at him to _turn the damn light off and get into bed, Steve._ He obliges, ditching his phone on the chest of draws and sliding under the sheets, Bucky attatching himself to him like a limpet.

-

_heard this today. #cute ! youtube.com/watch?v=0VG1bj..._

-

'What the fuck did you do?'

It's early - too early, pale winter light just beginning to bleed in through the curtains, and Clint's a dark shape in the doorway. One of Bucky's arms is wound around his neck and he's got a mouthful of his hair too. Shoving a grumbling Bucky off him as Clint snaps the light on, blinding the pair of them, Steve sits up a little in bed.

'What happened? Is there an emergency? Is it HYDRA?' Steve mumbles, shielding bleary eyes against the overhead light.

Very slowly, Bucky sits up. Silently, he stares at Clint. Thirty seconds pass.

Clint turns off the light again.

'What's going on?' Steve whispers, mindful of Bucky as he steals a pillow from behind Steve and hugs it to his chest, grumbling a little as Clint noisily shifts from foot to foot in the doorway.

'Well, you got more followers than Katy Perry.'

' _That's_ what you woke us up for? To tell me that I got more followers than some actress -'

'Katy Perry's a singer,' Bucky mumbles into the pillow.

'-Some singer? It's -' he breaks off, checks the digital clock next to him. 'It's six o clock in the morning!' Next to him, Bucky lets out an offended groan.

'You're also on the news. _Again_.'

There's a long silence. Bucky snorts into the mattress, now, having rolled over a little in a determined mission to take over the entire bed.

'What the fuck did you do?' Bucky asks, echoing Clint's earlier sentiment.

'He posted a song about being gay on twitter.'

'Ooh. Brave choice there.'

'Apparently, according to the song, everyone's gay. Big words coming from America's national icon. The Republican Party want to withdraw their sponsorship deal offer.'

'Oh, however will I go on,' Steve snaps bitterly under his breath, rolling out of bed and allowing Bucky to succeed in having the entire thing to himself. He looks on with affection as Bucky spreads himself out, star-fish like, shaking his head as he pulls on a pair of joggers and a t-shirt. 'I don't get it, what's the big deal?' Steve shrugs as Clint switches on their television, a twenty-four hour news station flickering into life. His name is plastered across the screen.

_And now, returning to our top story: is Captain America gay?_

This, at least, seems to have Bucky a little more awake.

'They're fucking kidding, right?' He snorts, voice still thick with sleep, not noticing as Clint, clearly not overly concerned about their current predicament, snaps a picture of his frankly ridiculous bed head.

'I'm bisexual, _actually_ ,' Steve corrects the television, resting his hands on his hips to glare at the screen. 'And I'm a little amazed they haven't noticed already, to be honest.'

'Pepper wants to have a press conference. Apparently her phone's been going nuts.'

'God Steve, this is such a shit song,' Bucky groans, and Steve turns to see YouTube pulled up on Bucky's phone, one headphone dangling out of his ear. 'If you wanted to come out to the world via the medium of music you could at least have picked something _cool_.'

'I wasn't - _I wasn't coming out!_ I'm already - you know! Out!' Steve insists, gesturing towards Bucky, who's languishing across their bed trying not to laugh.

'Incoming from Pep. She says - Steve, you have to find a nice tie and try to get Barnes in a suit. You're talking to the press at at ten. She'll prep you on what to say. Meet downstairs at quarter to and try not to get into any more trouble until then. And she says she's going to have someone checking all your tweets from now on.'

Steve pauses, trying to take in the information Clint's just rattled off at him - but the archer's already wandering off down the corridor, bare feet slapping against the wooden floorboards as he goes.

'Um?' Steve declares to the room at last.

'Ten o clock, right? We got at least another four hours sleep,' Bucky reaches out a scrabbling arm in Steve's direction. 'Come back to bed, I wanna enjoy being America's greatest controversy.'

'You're the worst, you know that?' Steve huffs as he clambers underneath the covers. Bucky immediately latches on again, leg thrown across Steve's knees to keep him in place. 'You only want me for my body.'

'Yep. Your great, sexy, cuddly body. Now shut up and be the big spoon.'

-  
'Captain America -'

'Please. Call me Steve. Or sir,' Steve interrupts, glad at least to get the awkward crowd laughing. Bucky's at his right hand side, jittering his leg up and down. Steve reaches under the table and wraps his fingers around Bucky's metal hand, offers a quiet smile when he glances over. It's not enough to stop the constant movement of Bucky's leg but he does release a long breath and stop eyeing the exits quite so fervently. 

For all his blase joking and attitude, Bucky's never been good at press. There's always the niggling feeling, deep under his skin, that the newspapers look at him and see his past before they even consider his present. They see James Buchanan Barnes, Captain America's best friend, war hero, the man who gave his life for his country. Or - even worse - they see the Winter Soldier, the assassin, the man with half the world's blood on his hands. They very rarely look and simply see _Bucky_.

So Steve's determined to make this as easy, painless and quick as possible.

'Um, Steve,' the journalist corrects himself; he's young, sweating profusely, a stylish haircut beginning to wilt. He's from the New York Times, clearly nervous as hell, throat bobbing when Steve offers him a smile and Bucky stares flatly at him, drumming the fingers of his right hand against the table top they're sat behind. 'I - well I guess I'll just ask what everyone's thinking. Um. Are you gay?'

Bucky hides his smirk behind a hand. Steve sighs.

'Actually I'm bisexual.'

There's a moments silence.

'I'm currently dating Bucky, which is why he's here with me today.'

More silence. The entire room is staring at him. Steve can't seem to stop talking.

'I - uh, I sort of thought everyone already _knew?'_

A few beats. Then the room explodes into chaos as everyone asks half a dozen questions at once. Pepper steps in to attempt some crowd control and when Steve turns to look at Bucky, he's rolling his eyes - but he's grinning too, and Steve feels him squeeze his fingers.

'Jerk,' Bucky murmurs quietly, so the microphone won't pick up the sound.

'Punk,' Steve responds, smiling at Bucky as if he's the only one in the room.

 

 

 

 


	2. 2.0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers tower is at war and Bucky's the only one who can bring an end to the chaos.  
> The whole world's watching.  
> On YouTube. Steve blames Tony entirely.

Every one of Bucky's senses are on overdrive, the crackle of the comms in his ear a dangerous rustle as he traces his finger over the trigger of his gun, stalking through the shadows of the Avengers tower. Red traces the walls in long slicks and smears that he tries desperately to ignore as he checks the corners of the long hallway he's ended up in.

'Barton? Are you with me?'

'Roger that.'

'We're - we're the only ones left, Clint,' he breathes out, gaze a constant wary flicker as he scans his surroundings, strains his hearing for a bare sound, another sign of human life other than Clint's tinny voice in his ear.

'Yup,' Clint shoots back, sounding grim.

'You got any visuals on the enemy?' He breathes back, voice a little hoarse, the memory of his own screams rattling around the tower as Banner had gone down a chilling reminder of the danger they're in.

'Last time I saw Stark he was holed up on the fifth floor. Haven't seen in Nat in a little while and Cap -' Clint breaks off, unsure, and Bucky's stomach drops jolts, skin turning cold.

'Steve?' He breathes out. The last time he'd seen Steve he'd been in the sight of his gun.

He hadn't been able to pull the trigger.

'Cap's out, Bucky.'

He lets out a long, shaky breath, tries not to drop to the floor.

' _Jesus_.'

There's a long, crackling silence over the comms, as if Clint's giving him a moment for his mourning.

'You know, I feel like you're taking this pretty seriously for a game of paintball, Barnes,' Clint's voice echoes round the corner, his footsteps noisy - on instinct, Bucky aims his gun, squeezing the trigger before he can think, the small paint pellet missing a fast-moving Clint by a bare inch only to explode into the wall behind him.

'Red paint - that's some weirdly violent imagery you've got going there,' Clint muses, looking at the sprays of red paint that decorates the corridor. 'I can't say I'm _surprised_ that you picked it, but it would be nice if Tony's home, that he's very kindly shared with us, doesn't look like a crime scene once we're done with it.'

'All's fair in love and - uh. Paintball,' Bucky finishes lamely, dipping his fingers into the red paint and smearing two lines on each cheek, ignoring the way Clint rolls his eyes at him. 'So it's just Stark and Nat left?'

'We haven't got a chance,' Clint grumbles, folding his arms and leveling Bucky with a distinctly unimpressed look.

'We'll take the stairs - Stark took control of the elevators long ago. Nat'll no doubt be waiting for us, but if we can just get the element of surprise I think we might be able to take her.'

'Great. Do you think we'll be done in the next twenty minutes though? Because I ordered pizza and I don't want Steve to eat it.'

'Come on, soldier.'

'Yep - but the pizza?'

-

'How long do you think it'll take for them to realise?' Steve muses, watching the stream from Stark's security cameras. They'd taken the opportunity, upon growing tired of shooting at each other with bruise-inducing paint pellets, to instead settle down in one of the many common areas that are dotted around the tower and give Steve another crash course on the intricacies of social media. Today's lesson; live streaming.

Stark had started wincing and answering phone calls ten minutes ago - something about YouTube "crashing" and "server overload" and a lot of other technical jargon that had gone straight over Steve's head - but now, apparently, he's hosting about a billion people on the StarkTech servers, allowing them to watch Barton and Barnes crawl around a relatively-deserted Avengers tower armed with modified paint guns, looking for enemies who are currently busy eating popcorn and, in Nat's case, giving herself a cuticle treatment. Occasionally the feed'll cut to footage of Nat filing her nails, or Steve, who'll wave at Tony's web camera and loudly ask the room at large why he can't see the people watching; live streaming is a complex process and, admittedly, he'd tuned out for most of the explanation.

Innocently, Steve starts digging into the pizza Tony had shoved into his lap with paint-stained fingers. Pineapple and ham - not his favourite. In fact, he's _fairly_ sure Barton likes those toppings the most. Maybe if there's enough they can save him a slice.

His twitter's going wild - as it usually is these days, particularly since the press conference - and he lazily taps out a few replies. Turns out a few other superheroes have twitter, and whilst this Johnny Storm kid does seem to take an awful lot of selfies of himself on fire, he's kind of funny and posts lots of videos of cats in boxes which Steve, as a solid supporter of modern culture, greatly appreciates. Skye and FitzSimmons seem to send him half a dozen snapchats daily - most of them reading _FURY SAYS HI :)_ or various shots of Coulson and Hill asleep in awkward places. Steve dreads the day they all discover planking - and today's no different, Skye proudly showing off some internet meme she'd made from a screengrab of Barnes' face covered in red paint that seems to have taken over every social media platform Steve's on.

He'd asked Tony what a meme is. The man had given him a worried, slow blink, then rang Skye to scold her with various phrases like _bad influence_ and _preserve his innocence_.

Nat's just offered to give him a pedicure, certainly looking a lot less intimidating than usual when wearing a mango face mask - and Steve _needs_ to get a picture, if only in the name of revenge. She and Bucky had given him a full makeover the other day whilst he was asleep on the way back from a mission and posted the results to twitter. False eyelashes had been involved. Steve is not a man to take false eyelashes lightly - when the elevator door is wrenched open with a noisy, metallic crunch.

Bucky and Barton fall through the door, the ex-assassin bursting into the room brandishing a pistol as if it was a natural extension of his arm. He seems to falter, eyes wide, when his gaze tracks to Steve, whose t-shirt is covered in a rainbow array of coloured paints, curled up on the sofa in jogging bottoms and bed socks.

' _Steve_ ,' Bucky breathes out, looking as if he's fighting a smile. 'You're okay!'

Tony, very quietly, is tapping frantically away at his laptop. In Steve's hand, his phone screen flickers as the feed currently streaming across the world via YouTube switches to show the five of them gathered together.

'Um - yep! Do you want some?' Steve asks, chipper, brandishing the pizza box towards the pair in the doorway -

Clint's enraged roar is something he'll never forget, the fury on his usually placid face seared into Steve's brain as he whips the gun out of his pocket.

_'That's my pizza, you son of a bitch!'_

It all happens so fast; Nat's taking a shot to the chest in seconds, an irritated huff accompanied by a ferocious glare sent Clint's way as bright red paint stains her t-shirt. Tony lets out an offended yelp as he takes a shot to the shoulder - and then Clint's swinging round to aim at Steve, a cold fury in his gaze as he almost relishes the moment, Bucky stood uselessly by his side, stunned by the latest turn of events.

Instinctively, as the shot rings out, Steve holds the pizza box up to his chest.

The room turns silent as Clint drops his gun to the ground with a noisy rattle. Slowly, Steve opens the box.

'Aw, _pizza_ ,' Clint whines upon seeing the entire thing obliterated by the paint pellet, a spray of red mixing oddly with tomato sauce.

Tony's laptop chirps at them. Their viewership's gone up by another two million.

'This is gonna be on the news, isn't it?' Nat sighs at them.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luke asked me to write some avengers on real missions.  
> Um. I didn't do that. In any way.  
> Hawguy references bcos u should ABSOLUTELY read that comic.


	3. 3.0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In retrospect, Avengers smack-cam is the worst idea Steve Rogers has ever had.
> 
> Which says a lot, coming from a man who's launched a rescue mission behind enemy lines armed with a tin shield, who's flown an airplane into the ocean - who once thought it would be a good idea to tell Bucky that One Direction are descendants of various members of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

  
In retrospect, Avengers smack-cam is the worst idea Steve Rogers has ever had. 

Which says a lot, coming from a man who's launched a rescue mission behind enemy lines armed with a tin shield, who's flown an airplane into the ocean - who once thought it would be a good idea to tell Bucky that One Direction are descendants of various members of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

But when Bucky comes barreling into their room at six o clock in the morning on a Sunday - Bucky Barnes is a man who, in his twenties, has grown to treat YouTube like a child treats morning cartoons, using the internet as his virtual playground - Steve, grudgingly, after being dragged kicking and screaming out of the world of sleep, watches the vine Bucky shows him.

Which leads to two hours of watching vine compilation videos with Bucky burying his face into Steve's shoulder, giggling into the skin there. 

Which, in turn, leads, an hour after that, to Bucky setting Steve up on vine. Bucky's only had the app about three days and he's already got more followers than some kid who calls himself KingBach - he's been grumbling about _that Nash Grier sexist piece a'shit_ since Wednesday. Absurdly, his only video so far is of himself eating Ben and Jerrys on a roof somewhere in the city, a situation only clarified when Bucky, hooking his chin over Steve's shoulder as he fiddles, a little clumsily, with his phone, explains that _I'm waitin' for someone to notice I'm on top of the Empire State Building. Sam flew me up._  

Of course.

The two of them lazily debate back and forth on what Steve's first vine should be as Bucky huddles under the covers, his early morning start apparently having taken it out of him; just as Steve's beginning to brighten up, considering going to make coffee or some breakfast, Bucky's dragging the covers up over his head and poking Steve in the ribs when he makes moves to get up. 

Steve relents, eventually, ducks his head under the heap of covers - Bucky insists on them, despite Steve's naturally high body temperature. Nevertheless, Steve would rather waking up feeling as if he's fallen asleep under a blanket-shaped oven than listening to Bucky's teeth chattering through a nightmare-addled sleep - to find Bucky, eyes scrunched up against the light Steve's letting into his impromptu hiding spot. 

Just as Bucky's dropping off again, Steve's fingers lacing through his hair, three fateful words are mumbled against the hot skin of his collarbone.

 _Avengers smack cam_ , Bucky sighs.

-

They start with Bruce, because the man's known to take afternoon naps in the dusty warmth of Tony's library. Unlike his fellow scientists - Jane and Tony seem to run on a mixture of coffee and pure enthusiasm, rather than actual, old-fashioned sleep - Bruce takes regularly naps, as his current, near-catatonic state slumped over a stone-cold mug of tea shows. 

Steve, shaving foam in hand, is looking a little dubiously over at Bucky. Who's smirking back at him.

Evily.

'I don't think this is such a good idea, Buck,' Steve muses, eyeing Bucky's phone warily. 'What if I hurt him? Or what if he hurts _us?_ '

'Then you'll be an internet sensation,' Bucky whispers in reply, tilting his head to one side after a moment's pause. 'Well. More of an internet sensation you already are. Or just in general a sensation. A - a _life sensation_ , a -'

'Alright,' Steve hisses, bright red face visible even in the dim light of the library. 'Alright, I'll do it just as long as you shut your damn mouth.'

'Love it when you talk dirty -'

' _Bucky-'_

'Now, we're agreed - if Bruce hulks out and destroys half the building, this was all your idea. Right?'

' _What_ -'

'Recording, Steve!'

Trying not to roll his eyes too much, Steve glances to whereabouts he thinks the camera should be on Bucky's phone - he's actually directing his gaze half a foot to the right, for some unknown reason, but Bucky's not about to interrupt the moment - and manages a quiet, thoroughly unenthusiastic,  _smack cam_.

The resulting _slap_ is noisy enough to reverberate around the entire library, even if it slightly muffled by the wad of shaving foam on Steve's hand. Bruce startles awake almost immediately - the snuffling sound of an interrupted snore is spectacularly nonthreatening - blinking bleary eyes up at Bucky, who's peering excitedly over Steve's shoulder, and the man in question, on the brink of a string of apologies.

'I'm not angry,' Bruce tells them calmly. 'I'm just disappointed.'

The recording cuts out and Bucky rolls his eyes even as Steve's head tilts back, groaning up at the ceiling.

'That's even _worse_ \- see what we did, Buck?' Steve sighs, as Bruce folds his arms over his chest and settles back into sleep, some of the shaving cream wiping across the cushion he's resolutely shoved his face up against. 'Man - maybe we should get a cloth, or a flannel, or -'

'You're terrible at pranks, Steve. I'm ashamed to be associated with you,' Bucky tells him, all mock-serious even as Steve aims a book at his head.

'I'm good at pranking people I _actively dislike_ ,' Steve insists. 'Remember Carl Romerez in fifth grade -'

'Oh my god, Steve, we all remember Carl Romerez in fifth grade because you have told this story approximately _six hundred times_ -'

'I swear to god James Buchanan Barnes, this next book will _not miss your head_ -'

'That book is fifty years old and costs two hundred dollars. Put it down.'

The pair still. Gingerly, Steve places the book back on the shelf and glances to an equally-guilty looking Bucky.

'Sorry Bruce.'

'Yeah. Sorry Banner.'

'You could at least say it like you mean it -'

'What, you want me to get on my knees and suck his dick while I'm at it?'

' _Jesus_ Bucky, I -'

_'Get out!'_

-  
'Wanna help us do smack cam on Nat?'

Clint's lazily sprawled across the sofa, magazine in one hand and phone in the other. Somehow, he's chewing on a slice of pizza, although Steve isn't sure where the pizza came from. Or how Clint's managed to find an extra appendage to feed himself with.

'Can't.'

'You mean you won't?' Bucky shoots back, eyebrow raised, as Steve watches over Clint's shoulder whilst the archer taps away at twitter.

_dumbass boyfs are bugging me again. wait up twitter they'll probably say something hilarious(ly stupid) soon. #goldenoldies_

'If _hashtag golden oldies_ is trending by the end of the day I will personally confiscate your phone, Clint Barton,' Steve scolds him, watching with something close to a smirk as Clint hurriedly shoves his phone into his jean pocket and glares up at him. 

'Steve, last week _international love your dog day_ was trending because you misread a tweet about Jesus. So you can pipe the fuck down.'

(In his defence, Steve had thought the concept was really cute, and it's not his fault Stark's newfangled screens have text so small you need a microscope to read it. Anyway, in Steve's book, dog and god aren't so different. Because dogs are amazing and Thor, who's a god, is also essentially a giant puppy, and -

Steve's fairly aware his logic's getting away from him now. The Christian church weren't particularly happy that their _international love your god day_ hashtag had been hijacked, but Steve had been sent _a lot_ of pictures of puppies so, really, who's the real winner here? The answer, of course, is everybody. Especially dogs.)

'As I was saying,' Clint starts up again snootily, shooting Steve a dirty look, 'it's physically impossible to smack-cam Nat. Far greater men than you have tried. And failed.'

'By _greater men_ you mean _you_ , right?' Bucky demands, lazily wandering round the sofa, managing to distract Clint enough that Steve can lean over and sneak the half eaten pizza-slice from between his fingers. 

'You know that mack-off scar on my shoulder blade? That's from when I tried to smack-cam Nat.'

Steve tries not to roll his eyes.

'Nat says you got that after you broke her hair straighteners.'

There's an awkward, uneasy silence as Clint seems to panic, his face twisting through a variety of expressions from frustration to a nostalgic sense of horror, before finally blurting out;

'It wasn't _my_ fault, alright? They're weirdly complicated and my hair had gotten really long, it was out of hand, to be honest and - why do they go up to such high temperatures anyway? And besides, they weren't Nat's, they were _Sam's_ , why does he even _have_ straighteners, they _ganged up on me_ -'

'All of this should be filling you with a healthy sense of revenge, Barton. Come on, join the cause - we're callin' it _Avengers Smack-cam_ , Steve's patented the name, they'll probably make a movie out of it -'

'They won't -' Steve pauses, thinks of all the terrible, terrible _movies_ Netflix has brought him. 'Actually, they probably will.'

'Alright. If it'll get you two to shut up, I'll do it. And Steve, back the fuck up and go get me another slice of pizza. I'm a trained spy, you think I don't notice two old men conspiring to steal my food? Go on, scat.'

-

(Unsurprisingly), attempting smack-cam with Nat ends _horribly_.

After their relatively tame attack on Bruce, they figure nothing can be as bad as waking the Hulk up from his sleep in a violent and messy manner.

They don't even get that far with Nat. 

It's Bucky who creeps closer, Steve and Clint keeping watch on Nat - from a safe distance - to keep an eye out for any signs of her waking. She's resting peacefully, almost entirely still other than the steady rise and fall of her chest, curled up in a chair in the shared lounge. Bucky, had - somewhat desperately - justified that if she's foolish enough to nap in a public space full of childish superheroes, she deserves everything she gets.

Bucky's changing his tune, however, when Nat wakes up.

He manages to mouth out _smack-cam_ at Clint's phone, eggs in hand a good two inches from Nat's face, when she explodes into waking, her hand a tight grip on Bucky's hair, her knee jutting up to force the eggs to the floor before Bucky can so much as squeak. In the corner, Clint shakes his head and Steve considers abandoning all sense of loyalty, justice and good, and making a run for it. 

There's a quick, angry exchange in Russian. Bucky's released, the three boys are sent to clean up the eggs, and when Steve and Bucky wake up the next morning it's to Nat, standing over them with a camera, and fifty breakfast's worth of cold scrambled egg at the food of their bed. She's cackling.

-

What started as some innocent, vine-inspired smack-cam ends up in an all-out prank war.

It's on the news. Most of what they do these days is. They also end up trending world-wide on twitter every now and then, and Pepper forces Steve and Bucky to film a PSA about the dangers of taking pranking too far. It gets more parodies than the Wrecking Ball video, and Clint and Nat decide to upload one of the two of them putting on stupid Brooklyn accents and complaining about how much better things were in _the good old days_. 

They get Tony in the middle of a fake mission set up by Coulson's ragtag group of SHIELD agents - Steve sort of wants to adopt FitzSimmons, Bucky's halfway in love with Skye, and Clint keeps on asking Nat when her wedding to Melinda is. Sam floats past Tony in search of an escaped, mutated lizard man - it's a fake, obviously, but Steve's heard stories, and nothing surprises him these days - and empties an entire bucket of glitter over Tony's suit. 

 _#GlitterMan_ trends on twitter for three days straight and Steve's quite possibly never been so happy in his life, reading out various ridiculous tweets and facebook statuses about the event every time a new wave of glitter appears out of Tony's hair. Or his suit.

'This shit is in the joints, Steve,' Tony bemoans over breakfast as Steve cackles into his cereal. 'Don't you laugh at me, Rogers, I'm gonna use your entire army fucking pension to pay for repairs. We can set up a repayment charge, does two thousand percent interest sound fair, you little shit?'

-

Trying to get Steve back - whom Tony, Nat, Clint and Thor (who was taken out by Steve and Bucky the other day with handfuls of flour) see as the key instigator, the source of the war that's taken over the tower now. Bucky very much likes this version of events, and will tell anyone who listens with a shit-eating grin on his face that the whole thing was Steve's idea - is nigh-on impossible. Steve needs four hours sleep a day at best, and is wise to all their tricks now, sleeping with his door locked and making sure never to drop off in front of the television or in the jet on the way back from missions. Bucky, it turns out, is unfairly impossible to corrupt - at one point he'd taken the five hundred dollars Tony had given him to dye Steve's hair red, white and blue in the middle of the night, and taken the two of them out to dinner and a show instead.

Nat's sure she's got him one evening when she manages to sneak into his and Bucky's shared floor in the tower. She'd heard raised voices earlier, had thought nothing of it; now the apartment is still and silent, one of the windows open, curtains fluttering gently against the warm air that's streaming into the bedroom. The covers are ruffled and messy - unusual, for two military men - and the entire room gives a sense of the abandoned. 

Moving silently, camera phone held almost like a gun, Nat follows the quiet rumble of voices to the bathroom; the door's open a few inches and she takes care to avoid a creaking floorboard just outside the doorway. 

She's not sure on her plan - perhaps to just burst through the doorway screaming, interrupting two of America's greatest heroes in the bath - but she pauses when her gaze finds the two of them. Nat only gets a quick glance - Bucky's face, tear-stained and pale, his lips raw with having been chewed at 

(it's a habit she remembers clearly, those chapped, dry lips against her own a long, long time ago)

as Steve gently runs fingers through long hair. It's an unbearably intimate moment, Steve washing Bucky's hair, and Nat hurriedly shoves her phone away, turns so fast she almost trips, remembering the raised voices from earlier - a nightmare, perhaps, or an argument.

When she returns to the kitchen to find the gathered Avengers staring at her, Tony looking particularly eager, she shrugs.

'I think they've gone out for dinner.'

She creeps into Clint's bed that night, curves her body around him and takes comfort in the heavy weight of his arm around her waist, laughs when Clint grumbles over her stealing the covers.   
She makes sure to delete the shaky footage of Captain America's bathroom door from her phone in the morning.

-

They all get their revenge anyway. 

TIME wants to do a photo shoot with them, and after they've all spent a good ten minutes laughing at Bucky, who leaves the photographer shaking in fear and leaves TIME without even one suitable photo for them to use, it's Steve's turn.

And, like a miracle, someone brings out an eagle. Not just any eagle. A bald eagle, from the Bronx Zoo. 

It's called Steven.

And it's not quite smack-cam, but when Steven bats Steve in the face with his wing and Thor manages to clumsily catch it on his camera - well. 

Revenge does sure taste sweet. Particularly when it comes into the form of America's national symbol punching Steve in the face. 

 _#SteveVsSteven_ trends for twenty-four hours straight and next time Steve steps out of the tower he finds a vendor selling a t-shirt with his shocked face, post-eagle attack, plastered across it. 

He buys one for each of the Avengers.

 

(Bonus:

Steve hates YouTube.

Really, _really_ hates YouTube.

Because they've finally gotten over the pranking, he's finally safe to nap in random places and not have to check his shampoo for hair dye every morning, when Bucky launches himself out of bed at six o clock in the morning on a Sunday, a hand over his mouth.

Steve goes from sleepy to horrified in seconds - because he can _hear_ it, which means Bucky must be watching _it_.

 _It. That_. The music - the footage he's been hiding from Bucky ever since they returned, the musical number he'd paid the Howling Commandos ten bucks apiece not to tell Bucky about, is now blasting out of Bucky's phone. Bucky, who's currently got a hand rested on the bed frame to hold himself up, hands clutching at his ribs.

At breakfast, a few hours later, when someone's quiet humming ends up into a rousing chorus of _Star Spangled Man With A Plan_ , Clint and Thor doing high-kicks in an impromptu two-man chorus line behind him, Steve decides he's going to eat his cereal on the balcony.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT HAPPENED idk why this took so long.   
> For Luke and Aimee, who maybe won't be getting train fic this arvo bcos I'm super tired :/ so I edited this for them instead. (HAVE FUN THIS W.END U GUYS ILY)

**Author's Note:**

> the song this fic refers to is, of course, the wonderful 'everyone is gay' by a great big world. i wrote this basically because every single song on their album reminds me of stevebucky (have you HEARD i don't wanna love somebody else?)  
> also i know in reality steve rogers is probably great with technology but i wanted to write a fic where he doesn't totally get the impact of his social media foot print and stuff.  
> this fic got out of hand to be honest.  
> come say hi at whambamsebastianstan.tumblr.com or on twitter @peedonthefloor :) would love to hear from you


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